Tag Archives: ursul

It is not really the Odinist New Year today, we had that a little earlier, and are still in the midst of our 12 Nights of the Yule until 12th Night itself, and 3 Gods Day, when we shall exchange presents (!) but I wanted to offer good wishes to all our pro European folk and wish everyone a joyous New Year!

Hail our Ancestors, our Tribe, our Future!

Despite us lowly Scandinavians and other Europeans, “not having any culture” (according to Jewish academics), 75 thousand revellers attended the Hogmanay New Year’s Festival in Edinburgh tonight, 1o, 000 of them dressed as Vikings, and carrying torches in riotous procession down the street. As our society begins to be illuminated with the truth, despite the Jewish stranglehold on the media, our Pagan European ways are coming back to our world in a big way… and our folk are beginning to stand up straighter and taller, with a devil-may care grin on their faces, so much so that the torches of those who honor our Heathen Celtic and Norse customs now set the streets of Edinburgh ablaze with light.

The streets of Edinburgh tonight, ablaze with Viking torches. A good start…

Far from being culture-less people who are “jealous” of the savages invading our countries thanks to Jewish-led “immigration, as European- haters such as Mona Sahlin suggest, we yet have an incredible wealth of traditions that have not been extinguished, not even by all the truly envious attempts to destroy them by those who have never created anything.

A token of things to come?

Tonight, throughout Scotland, the Scottish Isles, and the Isle of Man especially, a turning back of the clock to a remembrance of our past, and what could be our future, is happening. We can make that future real, we can preserve our Heathen European heritage and live freely again, if we just have the courage to fight. If you ask me if our people and culture are worth saving, my answer is “Aye”!

The magic of our religion and our tribe can still be glimpsed through the darkness, from times so ancient that they can barely be imagined, it endures even now.

So threatening was the Yule to those who seek to destroy us by taking away our religion and identity, that celebrating it was banned in Scotland, even in the superficially judified form of “Christmas”, for some 400 years, starting from the end of the 17th century to the 1950s. Samhain was, if possible, even more reviled and outlawed. Whenever European folk try to revive or keep the European customs inherent in the Yule, or Samhain, one Christian sect or another will seek to ban these supposedly evil Pagan ways, just as Messianic Jews are currently trying to do with the new specifically anti-European sects they are creating in an attempt to take the last traces of European content out of Christianity. Listen to the Renegade Broadcasting interview about bringing the Soul back into Souling or read “THE GRINCH AND THE REBIRTH OF THE SPIRIT OF THE JUL” to get some idea of just how monstrous these efforts are.

Because they were forced to work through our Odinist holidays, until the 1950s, the Scots could not gather for their Yuletide celebrations and had to wait until the New Year, whose date also has been altered, to practice their sacred customs and exchange presents, and these parties came to be known as hogmanays. Due to Judeo-Christian persecution, some Samhain and Yuletide customs changed to different dates.

“Lang may yer lum reek!” (Long may your chimney smoke!) A blessing meant to keep one in coal throughout the long, cold, Winter…

Animal hide wrapped around staffs and ignited made fine torches, and such torches are traditionally meant to have healing properties, and are thought to ward off evil. They also are known as Hogmanay. There are records of people dressed in animal hides running around villages and being chased and hit by sticks, a custom which resembles very old fertility customs I have read about elsewhere in ancient sources, customs which existed as far afield as ancient Sardinia, and throughout Europe, and Eastern Europe. I believe these were meant not just to impart fertility to people but to wake up Nature from its slumber and bring about the coming of Spring.

During the festival of Ursul in Romania, between the Yule and New Year’s holiday, homage is still paid to the beliefs of the ancient Heathen Geto-Dacians, in a ceremony in which men dressed up as bears, a sacred animal believed to have a strong protective force, dance to chase away evil spirits.

On the Isle of Lewis, in the Outer Hebrides, to this day, some Hogmanay traditions which I think must be derived from early Samhain festivals, which you can learn more about in my Odinist video rede and blot, Sacred Spirits of Samhain, still exist and are practiced by the local inhabitants.. These Hebridean rituals involve young men and boys forming themselves into opposing war groups. The leader of each band wears a sheep skin, and one of his men holds a sack. The bands move through the villages, from house to house, reciting Gaelic rhymes, and in return, are given bannocks (fruit buns) for their sack before moving on to the next house. This clearly is an instance of the Samhain custom of souling.

In the Highlands, the Hogmanay festival appears to be connected with an ancient Heathen custom of asking for a “saining”, or blessing, from our Ancestors for our families, tribe, and livestock. To this day, on New Year’s morning, some villagers in Scotland, still sprinkle holy water taken from a river that is believed to have been crossed by both the living and the dead, and this blessed water is drunk, and sprinkled on family members, animals, and in the beds of those seeking good fortune in the coming year. Juniper branches are then set alight and carried throughout the houses to purify the inhabitants and protect them from harm. Then, the windows of the houses are opened to let in fresh cold air to welcome the New Year, and this is followed by a draft of whiskey given by the lady of each house to all, and a sumptuous New Year’s breakfast.

Hogmanay has our connection to our past and present tribe woven into it and like all European Heathen customs, acts as a wellspring of our identity.

First-footing is a particularly wide-spread Scottish Heathen custom which has also survived the imposition of Christianity, one which begins with a series of visits to homes by friends and neighbors, and it appears that this ceremony once involved marching men, since once the male first-footers are said to have carried a decorated herring in procession. Another still remembered custom involved men marching in torchlight procession to the top of the Lomond Hills before midnight. The first visitor to cross the threshold of a home after the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve is thought to set the fortune of the coming year, and if he is a handsome man, so much the better. Both visitors and guests are given special gifts, such as salt, coal, shortbread, a rich fruit cake known as “Black Bun”, or whisky, and each gift is intended to impart different kinds of luck to those they are given to, and there is feasting and merriment throughout the night..

These Nutcracker Christmas Crackers, which we shall open on this 12th Night, the Night before 3 Gods’ Day, at Freyja Hof, are part of a very ancient Pagan European tradition similar to the divination games of Samhain, Christmas Eve, and First Footing. They hail from a time when virtually all people believed in our innate connection with our Ancestors and Nature, and they still remain, as do our beliefs, deeply embedded in our culture. Inside the crackers, which break open with a crackling sound like firecrackers, are charms which are meant to give us messages and luck in the coming year. Photo: Seana Fenner

On this night, in Stonehaven, Scotland, the fireball swingers still mimic the movement of the Sun in a parade, then symbolically throw their fireballs, which are on the ends of long metal poles, back into the Sea, from which the Sun rises. In a sense, they become the Sun as they march, swinging their fireball staves, because at times they hurl the torches around so quickly that they are completely enveloped in the flames, and appear to be fireballs themselves.

Revellers in Stonehaven, Scotland celebrate Hogmanay the Heathen way, marching while swinging baskets of fire above their heads, then, at the end of the procession, throwing the flaming baskets into the sea. . Photo Credit: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Soon, in the Shetland Isles, during the festival of Up Helly Aa, a Viking longship will be set alight to revel in the glory of our High Ones, and the greatness of their deeds and spirits. Long may these customs, so dear to the hearts of our Ancestors, survive, and may we survive along with them!

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